Page 29 of Ideal Life

“Woo-hoo!” Talia jumped up from the floor and did an adorable victory dance.

Sam was originally from Taipei, where his parents, Jenny and Roger Chang, owned Sunshine Cakes, a popular bakery chain that specialized in Taiwanese pineapple cakes. The traditional version of pineapple “cakes” were dense bricks of dry, shortbread-like cookie filled with a glob of gummy jam, which could be bought six for two dollars at grocery stores. But in the late eighties, Jenny had revolutionized them by insisting on making her own artisanal pineapple jam and a more buttery, flaky pastry and not using preservatives. She charged a premium for her fresh, revamped pineapple cakes, and it turned out that many, many Taiwanese had been yearning for a modernized take on the classic.

After their initial success, Roger and Jenny opened Sunshine Cakes stores across the island nation, with shop fronts not just in Taipei, but in Kaohsiung, Taichung, Taoyuan, and the international airport, too. That meant they were able to afford great schooling for their brilliant little boy, Sam, including a private American tutor to make sure his English was perfect. Life in Taiwan seemed ideal.

Until 1:47 a.m. on September 21, 1999, when the 7.7-magnitude Jiji earthquake slammed the island and shattered lives. Nearly twenty-five hundred people died. Eleven thousand were injured. And one hundred thousand were left homeless.

Somehow, three of the five Sunshine Cakes shops escaped relatively unscathed. But Jenny and Roger knew that there was no way they could keep their precious son in Taiwan anymore. He had to go abroad, somewhere safe that wasn’t on the tectonic Ring of Fire where another massive earthquake could strike and take his life at any moment.

They could not go with him, because immigration laws didn’t favor bakers, but Roger did have a cousin who was a professor at the University of Mississippi. They called him as soon as phone lines were back up, and he said of course he would take Sam in, even though he was a bachelor and didn’t know the first thing about children.

Which is how eight-year-old Sam ended up in Mississippi. In a time when international calls were expensive, he grew up hearing from Jenny and Roger for only a few minutes each month. “Uncle” John was always at the university lab or buried in his home office, so Sam didn’t speak to him much, and Sam’s Taiwanese and Mandarin stalled at the second-grade level. By the time Sam was in middle school, he couldn’t communicate much with his parents—let alone try to convey any subject with nuance—and so he grew up hardly knowing them.

Still, it was a good childhood. Because Sam was tall, he played basketball and was accepted by the athletes. Because he was Asian, he was allowed to be smart without teasing, since the model minority stereotype of the late ’90s and early 2000s worked in his favor, with everyone assuming that intelligence was just a trait Sam was born with that he couldn’t help.

When he graduated from high school, Jenny and Roger called to congratulate him.

“Stanford, good,” his dad said in his limited English. “Be focus, study hard.”

Sam replied in equally broken Taiwanese, “Don’t worry. I will studying very diligent.”

And as all mothers who love their kids said—even when their child was eighteen and had managed to survive perfectly fine all this time on the other side of the ocean plus half a continent away—“Take care, Sammy. Don’t get sick.”

Sam thought about this now as he and Talia walked from their dorm, along the tree-lined street with other freshmen who had started to chant, “Mo-no-nu-cle-o-sis! Mo-no-nu-cle-o-sis!” He gave Talia a wary look, but she just laughed.

The group got bigger as they got onto campus proper, with more students streaming in from their own dorms. The university looked different at this late hour, the windows dark, the professors and grad students sleeping like normal human beings and leaving the night to the shenanigans of the undergrads.

But when Sam and Talia made it into the center of the huge ring of sandstone buildings that was known as the Quad, it was like walking into another world. The night had been transformed into a party, glowing with strings of lights woven among the trees and a DJ pumping music from his station in front of Memorial Church. Hundreds of students milled around the quadrangle, some carrying neon light sticks, others dancing with friends, and a few already kissing.

Sam couldn’t help but smile. Talia was right. Full Moon on the Quad as a freshman only happened once; he was glad he had come.

Near them, the Stanford Tree—the school’s beloved and irreverent unofficial mascot—had an obnoxious “Kiss Counter” sign draped over her sequined redwood tree costume.

“What’s that about?” Sam asked.

“Part of an eternal competition,” Talia said. “Every year, the current mascot tries to break the record set by the previous Tree for number of kisses at Full Moon on the Quad. Don’t look now—she’s heading your way.”

Sam mocked terror and ducked behind Talia. “Quick! Hide me until she finds another target.”

Talia snorted but waved the Tree past them. “Nothing to see here.”

The Tree lifted a flap of her costume so that her actual human face was revealed. “Hiii, cute freshman,” she called out to Sam, who really was crouched behind Talia. “I don’t have mono—I swear.”

“Still a hard pass, but thanks,” he said.

The Tree laughed. “Then how about you?” she asked Talia.

Talia pointed to her cheek. “Right here.”

She received a quick peck, and the Tree flipped the number on the kiss counter on her costume to add to the tally and moved on.

“I feel like the Tree cheated,” Sam said, standing upright once the mascot had pranced away. “A peck on the cheek should’ve been a half kiss, not a full one.”

“Well, you’re the one who denied her a real kiss,” Talia teased.

The stringed lights above her and Sam buzzed. Then they flickered out and cast them in shadow.

He heard Talia’s breath catch in surprise. And suddenly, despite being surrounded by other students, Sam felt like they were alone in this small space of darkness.